1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer systems, particularly computer systems which access or are accessible by other computer system, and to methods of disbursing service requests to multiple service provider computer systems. Specifically this invention relates to methods for disbursing computer system service requests to multiple service provider computer systems in a tiered-parallel fashion such that a request can be satisfied in the shortest time possible. More specifically this invention relates to methods and technology for spawning a service provider request thread for each service provider listed on a configured tier or level and making the request for service in parallel for each service provider on each tier or level. Also, this invention provides the means for accommodating the situation when certain service providers are preferred over others for processing requests. A hierarchy of service providers is provided by defining multiple tiers for the prioritizing of service providers. All service providers in the first tier are requested in parallel, only after all providers of the first tier have failed is the second tier tried. This approach continues with successive tiers until either the request is serviced or all providers have failed the request. When used in combination with remotely accessible digital computers, this invention serves to provide a means for improving service request processing time across networks of connected digital computers, such as but not exclusively Internet. For the purposes of this patent application, computer system is defined as one or more computational devices, employing processing units and methods of communicating data between such processing units. Such a computer system may be a single "stand-alone" computational device or a "network" of more than one computational device connected over electrical lines, optical signals, phone lines or any other method well known in the art as a method of communicating between computer systems.
Providing a method for disbursing computer service requests to multiple service providers in a tiered parallel fashion is a useful technique to improving the response time of networked computer service requests without sacrificing the ability to designate a preference of a particular service provider or set of service.
2. Description of Related Art
Various approaches are well known for sending service requests to computers across a network of computer devices. These approaches generally consist of a central registry with multiple service providers sequentially receiving requests and waiting for responses. Examples of such approaches are embodied in network clients like Novell's DOS and Windows client known as VLMs and Novell's Windows95 client known as Client32. For example, these clients attempt first Directory Service requests on the NDS (Novell Directory Service) protocol and upon failure, attempt the same request on Novell's Bindery service. Unlike this approach, the present invention uses a parallel request structure to attempt to most quickly find the most preferred provider to service a request.
Another somewhat related approach involves systems where a series of requests are sent out to multiple processors, of essentially identical capability but with differing processing loads, in parallel. Unlike this approach, the present invention is designed both to permit a sequencing of tiers of preferred service providers and to work with very different service providers.
Other approaches described in the related art include the following: a telemetry system for connecting a number of subscribers to a provider of data services; a method of assigning a first control processor to the service set of a second control processor in a distributed-control communications environment; a digital communication network having a number of service areas each with a central node, each of which is connected to a number of remote nodes; an architecture for a switching node of a communications network having multiple layers; a distributed computer system having a number of digital computers interconnected by a bus, wherein commands are either processed by an individual computer system or passed along to thc next computer system on the bus; an emergency response service system with three types of destinations to which emergency calls may be routed; a network communications system which passes messages between gateways via a message handling system, a method and system for providing services in an object oriented system, an object-based relational distributed database system and method of transforming data stored in a number of remote user databases into a homogeneous user database structure; an object-oriented input/output system providing an interface between clients of the input/output system and peripheral devices; a method of browsing the Worldwide Web of the Internet using an HTML-compliant client supporting a graphical user interface and a browser; methods and apparatuses for communicating data from a central station to a remote station over a communications path; a distributed processing, interactive computer network and method of operation; and an interface system for transferring information between a local area network and a system memory associated with a station attached to the network.
This invention provides several important advantages over the prior approaches, including but not limited exclusively to: the ability to access service providers in parallel; the ability to work with various types of service providers, and the ability to maintain a hierarchy of preferred service providers. Furthermore, this invention is designed to meet the unique requirements of computer services, software and/or developers in distributing service requests to multiple computer system service providers connected remote to one another over generally large (Internet or the like) networks.
For general background material, the reader is directed to U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,672,602, 4,707,825, 4,763,317, 4,949,338, 5,287,537, 5,323,444, 5,377,191, 5,548,779, 5,560,005, 5,566,346, 5,572,643, 5,581,479, 5,594,910, 5,604,682, and 5,608,869 each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety for the material disclosed therein.